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It’s a pretty rare event that we’ll receive official confirmation of an agreement being reached to purchase a player before the actual transfer itself is announced, but that’s apparently the situation with Charles N’Zogbia. It’s all over bar the shouting.
I’m sure such steps wouldn’t have been taken if it wasn’t a formality, it’s just a shame that the player won’t have the chance to hook up with his new team mates in Hong Kong due to a lack of work visa. Then again, looking at the pictures of the boys sweating their… well, sweating a lot… he’ll probably be happy to avoid that particular pleasure.
It doesn’t really matter whether we consider N’Zogbia a replacement for Stewart Downing or Ashley Young -or both – he’s obviously a wide man that predominantly plays on the left, but can switch to the other flank too. Since it seems to be almost nailed on at this stage, I thought it might be worth looking at his Premier League stats from last season alongside Downing, Young and Marc Albrighton.
Before we look at the numbers, it’s worth remembering that context is important. At the risk of boring regular readers, I’m reminded of the Newcastle fans that scoffed at the £12m fee we paid for James Milner on account of his poor scoring and assist record the previous season. That was at Newcastle, he did much better at Villa the following season and improved again the season after that. He’s not been as productive at City, but we’ll leave that there.
Not that N’Zogbia’s numbers are poor, quite the opposite actually, I just wanted to stress that in all likelihood they’ll be even better in a claret and blue shirt. Particularly with assists; it takes two to Tango and Bent, Gabby and Delfouneso are pretty handy on the dance floor.
Statistical comparison
N’Zogbia played 81% of the maximum number of minutes in the Premier League last year – a little on the low side – but still either scored or assisted on 40% of Wigan’s total goals. I’ve added a separate line for goals scored from open play since four of Young’s seven goals came from the spot, which doesn’t provide a fair comparison.
N’Zogbia’s “per game” metrics are more than comparable with Downing, Young and Albrighton. As I’ve already mentioned, I can only see those figures improving at Villa. In the interests of fairness, I should concede that I see the same thing happening for Downing and Young at their new clubs, but that’s not out concern any longer.
And finally, the third section in the above table suggests that N’Zogbia will score goals for us. If you include Young’s two free kicks, but exclude the penalties, he, Downing, and Albrighton scored 15 goals between them last season. N’Zogbia and Albrighton scored 14 between them on the same basis, and Marc barely played more than 50% of the season.
It’s interesting to note just how poor Young’s scoring record was from open play consider that he spent the first three-quarters behind the striker; a position he seemed to feel was his best. Ironically, he delivered more assists last season than the one before, but less goals.
Aston Villa 1 Wigan Athletic 1
Just for fun, since it’s still reasonably fresh, I thought I’d take a quick glance at the 1-1 draw with Wigan at Villa Park in May. If you’ll recall; N’Zogbia opened the scoring in the tenth minute with a very well taken strike only for Young to restore the status quo seven minutes later, doubling his free kick tally for the season in the process.
Albrighton came on for the second half in place of Emile Heskey, who was lucky to avoid being sent off after losing his rag with the referee. N’Zogbia played the first 70 minutes.
You can click the graphic below for a full sized version, but even at this size it should be possible to make out the comparative positional discipline N’Zogbia and Albrighton seem to employ. N’Zogbia clearly switched flanks during the game, but still stuck to one side or the other. While it’s true that we played 4-4-2 during the first half and 4-2-3-1 during the second half, there’s no noticeable difference when it comes to Downing and Young; they both enjoyed roaming around the pitch throughout the game.
If we extrapolate Albrighton and N’Zogbia’s passing statistics for the time they were on the pitch over 90 minutes we would find that Downing (77% complete) and Albrighton (69%) completed 36 passes each, N’Zogbia (73%) 35, and Young (72%) 34. Not a great deal in it, but there certainly aren’t any “Hollywood” passes on N’Zogbia’s chart.
You may notice that N’Zogbia didn’t put any crosses into the box (those two corners don’t count), but that isn’t anything to be concerned about, it wasn’t part of Wigan’s game plan. The graphic below shows all of the crosses both sides put in during the game, successful and unsuccessful. When you consider that possession and completed pass share were pretty similar – although edged by Wigan – it’s easy to conclude that Wigan had a different philosophy in the final third to Villa.
Overall, my personal feeling is that we’re getting a very good replacement for Stewart Downing, possibly even an upgrade, and for about half what we sold him for. I hate to roll out the “nice bit of business” cliché, but that’s probably exactly what it will turn out to be.
One of the stats I haven’t touched on here is “dribbles”. Apparently, only Lionel Messi attempted more dribbles (331) than N’Zogbia (301) across the top five European leagues last season. It’s true, he may well be tackled frequently, but he still completed more dribbles (110) than any other player in the Premier League last season.
As frustrating as it might be seeing players dispossessed while overly keen to take on the opposition, I think I’d still rather see that than the early cross inevitably sent harmlessly over Darren Bent’s head. There’s definitely potential for more exciting wing play. And goals… did I mention goals?
Charles N’Zogbia is expected to complete his move this week.
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21 Comments to “Tale of the tape: N’Zogbia vs Downing vs Young vs Albrighton”
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all I have to say is welcome and can’t wait to see him work some magic.
Interesting post, but I think a shots on target per minutes played would have been much fairer than per game played. If you would have done that, Albrighton is ahead, but only slightly. Either way, I’m happy we’ve signed such a talented winger.
sorry, i should have explained:
all “per game” stats are based on actual minutes played & multiplied by 90.
for instance, zog’s 78 shots divided by 2785 min = 0.028 shots per minute, which isn’t all that meaningful.
but multiply by 90 mins and we have a “shots per game” stat. in this case 2.521, which we can all understand.
Ah, thanks for explaining Dan. I’m really excited about how our wing play will pay off now.
It’s exactly this type of excellent post that is the reason I read this site. I knew he would be a great signing, now I’ve got stats to prove it!
thanks… i like to say that we have the stats to have a good idea… he could be a disaster. but i’ve a feeling that he’ll do very well!
Tape did not show how often Downing pulled out of a tackle , or pulled his head away when boots were flying.At least Young is not a cowerd.
true. some things are outside the scope and tackle stats are more tricky to compile, but i’ve seen downing’s and you’re not far off at all!
Excellent article. Thanks for the work with the stats. Really interesting read. Potentially very exciting player then.
thanks. hope so! i think he’s going to be a bit different from the two who left, but could well be a pretty exciting if he’s given license to express himself.
Great article as usual, very interesting stats. Has the potential to be a very influential player, fingers crossed that he settles in quickly and gets off to a flyer.
Just want to add that injuries could have a big bearing on our season. I feel that if we are lucky and avoid any major injury gluts trough out the season, we could finish in the top half comfortably with the squad we have. But a prolonged injury at any stage to a Bent, an Albrighton, a Dunne or an Nzgobia could firmly fix us in the bottom half.
thanks! yeah, injuries have to be a concern. on one hand, in recent years, excluding last season, we’ve been very lucky. on the other, last year was a freak of nature. hard to plan for.
we either end up stockpiling players we can’t afford or use, or risk being caught short. i’d feel happier if some of our players, especially the central midfielders, were a little more versatile to provide cover.
Six fouls committed by Downing all year is remarkable. Not that he was ever thought of as a physical player, but with 38 starts you should be able to get six fouls just by accident. N’Zogbia’s 44 in substantially fewer minutes, and his being fouled twice as often, suggests a very different dynamic will come into play on the left wing.
i mentioned downing’s extraordinarily low foul rate on twitter a while back and promptly received several replies pointing out that if you don’t attempt many tackles, you won’t commit many fouls.
Fascinating stuff. What is your data source and how accurate is it?
one way or another, it’s all pretty much from Opta.
everything in the “headline statistics” section of the table comes from ESPN except for minutes played and assists, which come from the Premier League’s official site; for some reason their assist numbers were higher across the board, so i used those.
ESPN’s data is provided by Opta. the rest of the data in the table is calculated and the passing graphics are derived from the guardian’s chalkboards feature, the data for which again comes from Opta.
oh, and the breakdown of goals from free kicks, penalties and, by elimination, open play is buried within football-lineups.com. i’m not 100% confident in this one, but it’s good enough for purposes.
Yes all in all it does appear a nice bit of business, always thought Downing was strictly average at best.OK he got our player of the season but lets be honest there wasn’t much competition, most of last season we were a complete shower. Thought it hilarious the scousers got turned over by the mighty Tigers on their first outing of the season after spending all that money.
The reaction in Liverpool to paying $20 million for Downing seems to be almost uniformly negative, especially among those who think they could have had N’Zogbia for half as much. Many are complimenting Villa for being so shrewd. I saw many Everton fans at the Everton – DC United match Saturday, and they seemed to be pleasantly amused at Liverpool spending so much for Downing.
awesome stuff and so much better to read than just another repost of interviews or articles. Most exciting thing in here for me are the albrighton stats. It’ll be great to see him have a full season, and I hope we don’t sign anyone else to get in his way.
we’ve almost got a reversal of Young / Downing, with a right footed player (MA) who will hug the touchline and then a left footed winger/floating player (CNZ).
My only concern now is we are a bit light on wide players so these 2 will have to play a lot of games and not get injured for us to do well this season.
Great post – thanks
I think, on the whole, Villa can be very proud of themselves here. They’ve done great business and it could be argued that N’Zogbia fills two niches at once.
http://coxinthebox.blogspot.com/2011/07/villa-do-well-from-downing-deal.html